Elvira Salazar Vílchez

Mural dedicated to Elvira Salazar Vílchez

We can see Elvira Salazar Vílchez, popularly known as ‘Elvirica’, making the flowers that adorn the hats of the San Isidro Labrador Dancers. Elvira could neither read nor write, but she was always keen on crochet and other handicrafts, which meant that, for over 60 years, she was responsible for making both the dancers’ hats and the flowers that give them their characteristic colour. It was hard work, bearing in mind that each hat consists of around a hundred flowers. The hats she made helped put the name of Fuente-Tójar on the map as far afield as America in the 1960s, a decade in which they were also exhibited in Madrid after winning the First National Prize for Traditional Dances. Later, in 1992, one of the hats was displayed at the Spanish Museum of Contemporary Art, and a copy was even sent to Prince Felipe de Borbón himself. Elvira died in 1994, aged 80. The work aims to showcase the cultural and traditional aspects of this practice, which are deeply rooted in the village, whilst also seeking to create an original piece in my own style. To achieve this, I explored various old images and also took some new ones so that I could recreate this work on a large scale and, in doing so, pay tribute to a woman known throughout the village for her work and her personality.